Who am I? And why should you bother reading my stuff?

Hi! Welcome to my blog. I am so excited for you if this is the first time you’ve visited my site. I’ve got so much cool stuff to share with you.

Firstly let me congratulate you on being here. The fact you’re on my blog suggests I hope, that you have an interest in personal development and improving your social abilities. You’ve come to the right place.

So…who am I? And what makes me such an expert in the field of social skills ? Good question.

My name’s Nik. I was born and raised in Wembley in northwest London, went to Westminster School and then straight to medical school at Imperial College London. Over the last five years however I’ve been moving around the south of England, working as a junior doctor in range of different NHS hospitals. Outside of work, I enjoy windsurfing, going to the gym, latin dancing (which I’ve only recently taken up but loving it) and of course writing. I love learning and reading about human psychology and am very interested in how people think and behave. I am continually amazed at how similarly our brains are wired on a cognitive level We all act in such a similar way when presented with certain environmental challenges or situations. We really do all think quite similarly it seems. Our actions are driven by the same (or similar) motivating factors, we share most of the same fears and our perception of ourselves and the world is remarkably consistent among ourselves. I want to spend my time studying the human brain and mind; and in particular finding ways to harness this knowledge to achieve my career and personal goals. Alongside my medical degree, I completed a BSc in Neurosciences and Mental Health in 2010 which helped me understand how our brains work on an organic level.

I hope that when you read my blog, you’ll discover a different world that will change the way you see yourself and everyone around you and that it will improve the way you approach social situations both at work and in your personal life.

When I began my journey of improvement in this area if my life, I know it sounds cliched, but the stuff I learnt blew my mind. Over a very short period of time I developed an incredible ability to meet and relate to anyone. I found ways to develop close connections very quickly and have people keen to keep in touch and get to know me. This was the case at work, in my social life and with relationships. It really did feel like a bit of an enlightenment.

I spend a lot of time researching social interaction, human psychology and cognitive processes by reading books, articles and listening to podcasts. My Neuroscience BSc lectures were useful too. I use what I learnt to formulate my own guide of mindsets and mental techniques which I then tested out myself before deciding what worked and what didn’t. Until now, all of my discoveries were in my head, occasionally written down on scrap pieces of paper or scribbled in a small notepad. In this blog I am publishing everything I’ve learnt, explaining each mindset and technique and how to implement them to achieve real change in your life.

I’ve learnt what forms the basis of a good interaction; the pitfalls; and how to use social techniques to change the way people see you; influence how they behave with you and in a nutshell, how to use this to get what you want. Now I don’t mean that in a manipulative way, I mean that this knowledge allows you to utilise the full capability of of your unique personality in order to provide value and benefit to the world and to the people around you, and in doing so, achieve your goals.

This really can feel like a secret superpower. Having access to skills that very few others seem to possess feels like you’ve stumbled on something esoteric and magical. Hence the name of my blog, Social Skills Jedi. (It’s also called that because I like Star Wars). Social skills play an important role in achieving success in every area of life, often trumping other factors such as intelligence and physical appearance.

My experiences as a doctor have been central to developing some really useful abilities in establishing rapport quickly with strangers. Since I started working, I’ve had countless conversations with families on topics such as switching off their fathers ventilator machine; telling a son that his mother wasn’t going to make it through the night; or that their uncle had a massive intracerebral bleed; or telling parents their 19 year old daughter has severe and irreversible brain damage. The NHS with the pressures it’s under, is not an environment where you have bags of time to get to know people before having these conversations, so I would often only spend just a few minutes developing rapport with relatives before delivering bad news and then supporting/consoling/empathising with them as best I can in a short time frame before having to rush back to the rest of my patients.

These experiences forced me to find a way to develop instant rapport in a way that enables relatives to trust and support the advice and decisions coming from this 24 (now 29) year old junior doctor.

Learning all of this stuff has changed my life. It’s transformed me from a quiet, shy type with social anxiety and periods of feeling low, into someone who’s confident, outgoing, happy and carefree. Making friends now feels effortless, my social anxiety has disappeared and I now look forward to (rather than fear) going to parties where I won’t know anyone, confident in the knowledge that I know how to present myself in a way in which others value me, want to hang out with me and get to know me. I find that I’m now able to visit countries I’ve never been to and form a social circle of cool, interesting people instantly who I can explore the city with.

I’m not trying to impress you or boast about the techniques I’ve acquired and I know there’ll plenty of people out there who are way better than I am at doing everything I’ve talked about. But I wanted to share with you what I have learnt, show you some of the techniques that have helped me massively and tell you about the mindsets I have adopted, in the hope that you can take away things that will change your life for the better.

Everything I create here is done with that aim and I hope you will find my blogs interesting and valuable to you. I do not do this for money. All of my content is free and my primary goal is to share my knowledge. I will from time to time let you know about courses and products on social skills and personal development which I genuinely feel would be hugely valuable to you so you can check them out for yourself. I will only recommend stuff I’ve tried and tested on myself so I’m only recommending stuff I know works. My links to some of them may be affiliate links which means I’ll get a small commission (at no extra cost to you) if you do choose to buy the stuff I point you too. You can avoid using my links, if you prefer, by just copying and pasting the URL’s (all listed on my links page) directly into your web browser. As I said, I’m not here to make money, but any proceeds I make will go towards developing the site for you.

Make sure you sign up to my mailing list here so I can inform you of stuff you absolutely cannot afford to miss. These will be things like free courses, seminars or resources. I’ll email only rarely for things you really NEED to know and I will NEVER send you spam.

Thanks for reading. If you have any questions, put them in the comments section and I’ll try to answer asap.